In a year of crucial Assembly elections, billed as the semi-final to the big 2024 finale, it’s natural for politicians from both sides of the aisle to be identified as ‘newsmakers’. But here is a central organisation that inarguably makes the cut for the biggest newsmaker in Indian politics – the Enforcement Directorate.
The ED is a quasi-judicial body that comes under the Union Finance Ministry and has sweeping powers under the PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act). With high-profile cases involving politicians, actors and celebrities, raids, seizures, attachments, summons and interrogation, the ED has turned into India’s most debated, discussed, opposed and feared agency.
For the BJP, the Enforcement Directorate is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s answer to corruption, dynasty politics and ‘entitled’ politicians. For the Opposition, the central agency is a “political tool” to “intimidate” Modi’s rivals and leaders who do not fall in line.
The Wide Net
In the past five years, the Enforcement Directorate has arrested at least 15 senior politicians, including former finance and home minister P Chidambaram, then deputy chief minister of Delhi Manish Sisodia, ex-chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Farooq Abdullah, influential Tamil Nadu minister Senthil Balaji, senior Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee, and over a dozen IAS officers.
The ED currently has around 22 important cases allegedly involving chief ministers, ex-Union ministers and senior politicians, including Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, Chidambaram, Arvind Kejriwal, Hemant Soren, Ashok Ghelot and his son, Bhupesh Baghel, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav and Abhishek Banerjee, among others. Many of them have already been summoned, raided and interrogated by the directorate.
Apart from politicians, the ED is investigating cases allegedly involving celebrities and senior IAS and IPS officers. It has already summoned a host of celebrities in connection with the Mahadev online betting app case and several bureaucrats for their alleged association with coal and cattle smuggling, land scam and other cases.
Cases in the Spotlight
The ED is currently investigating some of the most high-profile cases, including the National Herald case, Delhi excise policy case, Mahadev loan app scam, coal-cattle smuggling and recruitment scams in Bengal, Chinese loan app rackets and several bank fraud cases.
The directorate has simultaneously fought or has been fighting legal battles, including one that dealt with its former director Sanjay Mishra’s extension. A case related to the unflinching power the ED has and its authority under PMLA is back in the Supreme Court after the petitioners appealed for a reconsideration.
In July 2022, the top court, however, upheld the constitutional validity of several provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, pertaining to arrest, seizure, presumption of innocence, and stringent bail conditions.
Attachments and Extraditions
Between 2019 and 2023, the ED attached proceeds of crime and related assets worth around Rs 1 lakh crore in total under the PMLA and Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, 2018.
In response to a question in Parliament, Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions and Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office, said that in the last four years, the ED has provisionally attached proceeds of crime amounting to Rs 69,045.89 crore. He added that four persons have been extradited to India by the ED and extradition orders for three more persons have been passed by the competent courts. In addition, the ED has also attached assets amounting to Rs 16,740.15 crore under Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, 2018 and assets amounting to Rs 15,038.35 crore have been confiscated thereafter.
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